Read Online Raveling by Peter Moore Smith - Free Book Online Page B

going to take an ice pick and push it through
     your hand, right through the middle, and then I’m going to push the ice pick into your ear—”
    “Eric.”
    “—just far enough so you can’t even hear yourself screaming out of that ear but you’re not dead yet, and then I’m going to
     pull it out and push it into your other ear.”
    “Please, Eric.”
    “And then I’m going to stick the ice pick into your eye.”
    “Please stop.”
    “And then your other eye.” At this, I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining my brother really had blinded me. I was trembling all
     over. “And then I’m going to leave you in the woods for a while, and I’m going to watch you stumble around, all deaf and blind,
     screaming like an idiot, you fucking moron—”
    There was a crashing sound that came from the patio. I opened my eyes. Eric’s head turned.
    “What was that?” He got up and walked to the window.
    “What was it?”
    He slid open the patio doors and stepped through, turning on the porch light. I got up from the couch and followed him. The
     flagstones were covered with broken glass. “One of the pitchers fell off the table,” Eric said. There was wind in the treetops,
     a faraway rustling sound. There was a ripple onthe surface of the pool. “Can you feel the winter?” he said. “It’s far away, but I can feel it.”
    And I knew just what he meant.
    The sky had gone gray, and the sun’s rays were spiking over the trees. It must have been six in the morning. There would be
     mixed clouds that day, and the tiniest chill would invade the air, the infant beginnings of a new season.
    It was coming.
    “I’m going back to my room,” I told Eric. “And by the way, you’re a jerk.” I walked upstairs. In the hallway, when I passed
     Fiona’s room, I noticed that her door was closed. It occurred to me that Fiona never slept with her door closed. She was still
     too little. She was still afraid of the dark. But I didn’t do anything about it. I simply went into my race-car bedroom, closed
     the door, closed the windows, put on my matching race-car pajamas, and crawled into bed.

    In one of the imaginary photographs of Fiona, she is standing in the center of my family for a group portrait. Her hands are
     folded together in front of her red velvet dress. A white satin ribbon is tied in a bow around her neck. Her eyes are wide
     open, and she is smiling like only little girls who are having their pictures taken can smile—full vanity and joy, a complete
     absence of self-consciousness. Her hair has been done, and it curls up at the ends, sweeping down her back the way it did
     in the days before she disappeared. Our father’s fingers rest lightly on her head. She is so little next to him that even
     with his arms fully extended he can only just touch the top of her head. The rest of my family sort of fades into the background
     in this imaginary picture. I am there wearing my Declaration of Independence shirt and white pants. Eric is splendid in a
     dark three-piece suit, hair feathered back.Our father, eyes blue as ice, stares ahead into the sky behind the photographer—who would that have been?—and our mother,
     unfocused, turns her head slightly away.

    Katherine Jane DeQuincey-Joy was in no hurry to arrive at the small, lightless
enclosure
overlooking a parking lot—a highway in the distance, a strip mall beyond the highway, quiet as the inside of a drawer—that
     was her new apartment. She had no furniture yet, anyway. She had no television, not even a radio. Mark had kept all those
     things, of course, claiming she’d come crawling back. He’d kept everything he could, even some of her clothing, old photographs
     of her parents and sister, and a baby blanket, for Christ’s sake, that her own grandmother had knitted. What did he want with
     that? Katherine had brought a few boxes of books and psychology journals, the answering machine, the clothes she could pack
     in one suitcase. And there were the